Forgiving Jake

By Scott De Buitléir

Sarah was looking forward to date night with Jake until she's left impatiently waiting at the cinema with no word from her boyfriend. When she gets two calls within minutes of each other, the first breaks her heart, but the second changes her world forever. How will she be able to move on with her life, when she can't ask Jake what really happened? In his first novella, Forgiving Jake is a story from Scott De Buitléir about love, loss, new possibilities, and learning how to heal a broken heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott De Buitléir
• Release date: Apr 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463472101

Scott De Buitléir

Scott De Buitléir is an author and poet from Dublin, Ireland. Born in London to Irish parents, Scott quickly developed a passion for both writing and languages, becoming fluent in Irish Gaelic from a young age, and graduated from University College Dublin having studied Celtic languages.Writing poetry in both English and Irish since his teens, Scott's solo literary début was in 2017 with the release of the bilingual collection, Fás | Growth. The following year, he published The Irish Outlander, a partly autobiographical account of how the Irish diaspora continue to connect and relate with their homeland while abroad. In 2018, Scott released Yesterdates, a revised collection of his dating and relationship stories from his column in the British LGBTQ magazine, Polari. In 2020, two new works are due for release; a novella titled Forgiving Jake, and Scott's second bilingual poetry collection, Elysium / Párthas.Today, Scott lives in Cork city with his partner, Stephen. He regularly travels between Dublin and Cork, as well as regular visits to San Francisco.

Book preview

Forgiving Jake

Scott De Buitléir

MKB Publishing, 2020

Copyright © 2020 Scott De Buitléir

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Printing, 2020

ISBN 9780463472101

Published by MKB Publishing

Dublin, Ireland

www.scottdebuitleir.com

Other titles by the author:

Poetry:

Fás | Growth

Non-fiction:

The Irish Outlander

Yesterdates

Scott De Buitléir is an author and poet from Dublin, Ireland. He lives in Cork city in the southwest of Ireland with his partner and loves to travel. While he has published works of poetry and non-fiction before, this is his first novella. You can follow him on Twitter at @scottdebuitleir.

Forgiving Jake

Chapters

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Epilogue

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

1

"This is getting ridiculous,'' Sarah blurted out, looking at her phone for the seventh time that minute. She didn’t bother keeping her voice low. She was talking only to herself, but she didn’t care who was within earshot. Her patience ran out ages ago.

It wasn’t like Jake to keep her waiting on date night, although he had messaged her that morning to say that he needed to buy his mother’s birthday present, after the gym and before their cinema date, so he might be a bit late. Forty minutes were not just a bit, though. He had already bought the tickets, so she couldn’t even see the movie if she wanted to. Instead, she was left to wait in the foyer, apart from the odd time she would go back onto the street to look for him.

She checked her phone yet again, searching for any trace of online activity. WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram; all of them showed a last seen status of over three hours ago. She messaged him on almost every app, but none of them got through to his phone. Her calls just went to voicemail. Annoyingly, Jake was never too bothered to keep his phone charged, so a dead phone in the afternoon wasn’t totally unheard of.

For a moment, her reflection in the glass doorway of the cinema caught her attention. A brunette in a pink hoodie and fitted jeans stood before her in the glass, wearing a little light foundation and her favourite lipstick. The reflection didn’t emit the perfume Jake bought her for Christmas, but she always wore it for their date night. Thanks to Jake’s new job as a security guard, that Sunday evening was the only opportunity the two had to spend some quality time together, but she still looked forward to it. Maybe a hoodie wouldn’t normally be considered date night attire, she thought, but after a year of dating, their efforts were allowed to be a bit more casual, weren’t they?

More people passed her in the foyer, as she tried to calm her impatience and appear nonchalant in her solitude. She scanned the faces of those who were also on a date, as if she were channeling Jake on his night duties. A muscular guy with a leather jacket and tight haircut threw his arm over the girl beside him, who blushed as she looked up at him. Two guys shared the rewards of their raid at the snack counter, as they made their way to where the latest superhero movie was showing. Another couple looked less happy to be together, as a blonde girl threw cold looks at her date, who devoured a hot dog while trying to ignore his partner. Each of them had their own story, she thought, but at least they were together.

Looking at her phone one last time, desperately wishing to see an online status appear beside his name, Sarah gave up and walked across the street to the café. She ordered a lattè and sat down at the window, where she could still see who was approaching the cinema, like her boyfriend, for example, and hopefully soon. Maybe once Jake saw her, he’d run to pick her up in a passionate kiss. Or, maybe before she’d run to him and punch him in the balls. Whichever felt better in the moment, she reckoned.

Another few minutes passed. Could it be that she was an hour early instead? She checked the cinema’s timetable on her phone, and it proved Sarah was right. Jake was late… unless he meant the Revue Cinema instead of the Royal? It wasn’t too far away, but he usually preferred the Royal, and didn’t think much of the Revue. Another search showed that the Revue’s next showing of Danger in Paris was in fifteen minutes, but it seemed too unlikely that Jake would mess up their plans that much.

Her phone lit up, and its ringtone battled against the grinding of the coffee machine. Sarah’s heart jumped, but it was only her mother, Alice. She answered it with a frustrated, tired Hello.

Hey honey, what’s wrong?

Nothing much, apart from being stood up, by the looks of it. I can’t get through to Jake and he was supposed to meet me an hour ago.

Really? That’s not like him, Alice replied softly. "There’s probably a good reason though. I waited for your father for three